I am bored and a little lonely for friends. I need some female friends in my new town that I can hang out with every now and then. I miss going out to dinner and drinks with all my friends in Kansas.

So I am working on getting involved with activities in my new town and online.

I don't want a "best friend" or friends who will be wanting to hang out every single weekend. I just want some friends that I can email all the time and hang out with every now and then.

It is harder to make new friends when you work from home and don't have kids to drag you to school functions.

There is a county fair going on this weekend. Not really a place to meet friends since I don't do 4-H things and I don't own farm animals, but it will at least get me out of the house. I do want to try a bar nearby that has this virtual trivia game system that you play against other bar customers. I did the same thing in Kansas, but there is only one place near me that has that same thing.

Here is to making new friends and acquaintances.

Off Topic News: I have released the site addy of my "secret" office blog that I started to keep a few months ago. You can get to it by clicking the "Office Politics-My Other Blog" link in the section where I have a list of my favorite blogs to read. (scroll down the page and look to the right)

Everything has been groovy these days. Got our refund back from our former landlady, the house is coming together, dh is working and has mandatory overtime too, and I have really been enjoying the "vacation" recently before I start working.

Last night went to in-laws' house for a crab-bake. Yum yum yum!! We even took some crabs home for leftovers. I just ate them for lunch. Damn I love seafood.

And I am trying to get myself a free Ipod. So if you also want one, go to this link:

I've decided that I prefer ranch-style houses over two-story homes. My last "house" was a rented two-story duplex. It had 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a 2-car garage. Keeping that place clean was impossible. I will admit that I hardly ever vaccumed the staircase because it took alot of energy and my vaccum cleaner was really heavy. So I would literally go months *ashamed blush* without cleaning the staircase.

Now I am in a ranch-style home with NO STAIRS and the week I have been here has been the easiest time as far as cleaning and organizing for me. No more heaving things up the stairs, no more taking a million trip up and down the stairs while organizing, and better than that, no more vaccuming stairs!!!

My house is about the same size in square footage as my last home, but so much easier to clean and take care of.

So when it is time for us to upgrade to a bigger place in a few years, I will definitly be looking into ranchers.

Pending dh's drug testing (he is clean so unless there is a mix-up at the lab, he should be ok), my dh will have a job starting Monday! He will get the final results on Friday. So the rest of the week will be spent just hanging out and organizing the house.

This morning dh had an interview with Sam's Club but they only offered him 25 hrs per week for $2 less an hour than he can afford to take. So when he got back with that news this morning we were freaking out because none of his jobs were panning out. Yesterday we spent 3 hours at a temp agency just to have them say there was nothing available and probably wouldn't be for a while.

Our first mortgage payment is coming up soon and dh needs a job. This morning things were looking very bleak. Then out of desperation I tell him to call his brother-in-law's boss to find out if they are hiring. The reason we didn't call before is because his brother-in-law said that they were cutting down hours so it was very unlikely that they would be hiring now.

Dh called his boss and viola! They are hiring! So he drove to the office right away to fill out an app and do his interview. Then he went to the testing center for his physical (he passed) and his drug test.

On Monday we can breathe a sigh of relief once he starts working.

I will be starting my business soon I hope. Still waiting on that money from our former landlandy...

We still haven't made it to the shore since we moved here. We plan to treat ourselves to it next weekend hopefully. Yay for fun in the sun!

The ride from Kansas to New Jersey was pretty smooth. We left at 3am on a Sat morning, gave our two cats each one sedative we got from the vet, loaded the car, and from there everything was smooth. The dog was excited but slept very well after a while. He loved when we stopped for leg-stretching and refreshments every two hours. The ferret was up most of the time but would take naps every now and then. The traffic was really good since it was the weekend, so we didn't have to fight our way through rush hour.

The only "incidents" were when the ferret got a bad case of traveler's stool twice. One time we were able to pull into a rest area and clean our her little travel cage. The other time we were literally 10 min away from our hotel room in Ohio.

Speaking of Ohio, that is where we stayed the night. We broke our trip up into two days. We started driving at 3am on Sat and pulled into our hotel at 5 or 6pm that same day. Then we started out at 7am on Sun and arrived in NJ later that day.

The Closing

We were supposed to close on our house July 1st but the heating oil tank that was supposed to be dug up and a new one placed on top of land (per NJ law) was not done. So we never closed that weekend. So then our closing was pushed to Tuesday July 12th.

We arrived at closing a few min late because we had our final walk-through beforehand. Once we got there, the seller found a pricing mistake on one of the many pieces of paperwork we were to sign. This small mistake would have costed us, the buyers, $3K than we brought with us because no one expected that. So a closing that should have taken 45 min wound up taking 2 hours while they fixed their mistakes.

After two looooong hours we finally closed and took possession of our new home.

Unpacking and Unwinding

Since July 12th we have been in our new home. We are pretty much all unpacked aside from a few boxes filled with junk, decorations, and books. Those boxes we plan to go through and consolidate so that we can put them in the attic.

As new home owners, we are already planning our "To-Do" list of things we want to change or improve about our new house. Some things on it are required like making a washer/dryer connection in our "laundry room". Seems the last owners did their laundry at a laundromat instead of paying to get connections built in. Other projects are just cosmetic and can wait like painting the rooms new colors and cleaning our backyard of leaves, pine needles, and trash so that we can fence it in and start planting a garden.

For now though, we are spending our days unwinding until we have to go back to work. We seem to run lots of errands in the mornings but we have all afternoon and evening to do what we want.

Today I got my license changed over to a NJ one, we opened our bank account, and I called Cingular to complain about the bad service we have been getting out here. (they are working on it)

We got the house!!! After a LONNNG and bumpy road we finally got into our new home on the 12th. I will post details later. It is getting late and I am very tired so I am heading to bed. Just wanted to let everyone know the move (the physical move) went smoothly and the house is now ours!

Quote of the time:
"The fine for falsely pulling the fire alarm in the dorm is $1,000. The fine for setting an actual fire in the dorm is $100. So, I figure if I happen to pull the fire alarm, I'll just set a fire in the hall and save myself $900. It's a great plan. "
Shaina